


Beyond The Oak Doors

by Sherlyjohn



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: A LOT of Angst, An overuse of italics, Angst, Charles needs a hug, Dipictions of the Holocaust, Erik needs a hug, First Person, Holocaust flashbacks, Kinda, M/M, Poor Charles, Poor Erik, Poor Everyone, Pretty much just Charles and Erik, Stream of Consciousness, This Is Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlyjohn/pseuds/Sherlyjohn
Summary: The morning of the battle on the Cuban beach, Charles and Erik wake up side by side and both face the day and their own adverse ideals. Told from both first persons perspectives separately.





	Beyond The Oak Doors

**_Erik_ **

 

A blurred gaze and sleep-mussed hair greets me, the sun filtering through the window, lights chasing away the oppressive darkness of night. His mouth pulls up at the corners, a twinkle in his eye. Even though he hates morning with a fierce passion, he’ll still grin at me; his mouth lopsided and pink lips soft.

I grin back, despite myself, damn that sly smile and incessant hair flop that forces my mouth to turn up at the corners, even though I haven’t felt happiness like this in so long the feeling is foreign on my lips. The smile makes my cheeks sore and painful. I watch him stretch, his arms arching over his head and his legs extending out like a cat on the bed. His night shirt lifts up and exposes a stretch of pale skin there. I watch him bemusedly for a while before he has me in his arms, pulling me into the absolute deluge of pillows and blankets, into a cloud of suffocating warmth.

I shouldn’t be enjoying this lazy morning as much as I am; for there is work to do and wars to be won; but his impossibly blue gaze keeps me settled into his arms. I push back the mop of auburn hair out of his eyes.

He murmurs a _good morning_ in my head and I smile impossibly broader and have to think _good morning Charles,_ back. It’s only polite.

There is hesitance in both of our thoughts as Charles sits up and I follow suite.

We have to get up which means placing our masks carefully back over our warm faces and getting to work.

It is the beginning of the mutant war and the time has come too soon to prepare to fight. I can feel the tension in the air, crackling like electricity and the metal hum that vibrates around me, warning me not to leave. Hot dread fills my insides at the thought of leaving the sanctity of his bed, his room. The outside world threatens to pull us away from one another, to stretch and tear until we are pulled taught, snapping, breaking, collapsing. Our ideals are too different, our morals so adverse that I fear we will not survive this. Beyond the oak doors lies the cold world, unrelenting in its quest to destroy us.

I watch him with imploring eyes, concealing my thoughts with grumbles about the bed being too soft and  _ Charles you’re like a furnace.  _ He lets out a low chuckle and burrows closer to me, laughing as I fling the covers away from me. Before I can move, a warm hand closes on my wrist and he is calling to me.

_ Stay. Please. For a moment longer  _ and I concede.  _ Of course I’ll stay Charles I could never refuse you  _ and my heart clenches painfully around this fact. The world moves and changes and he changes with it while I remain, feet planted firmly. I do refuse him, not here, not in this room, only beyond those doors do I refuse him.

Beyond those doors I refuse everyone. I am only strong on my own. ‘Be the tree,’ My mother used to say to me, ‘Plant yourself so no one can cut you down.’ So I became not only the tree but the roots, snaking through the packed dirt and gripping tight to this revolting world, planted on a foundation of right and wrong. I had spent so long hating that world, bitter bile always gathers in my throat at the thought, choking me. Anger is an oppressive thing, it dilutes the tranquil river into a roaring tide, devastating everything in its wake. The waves have been crashing and corroding my shores for so long, that the love and hope for the world was swept away in a tide of blood and pain. My eyes only see the fear, the pain, the hatred that burns bright in people, singeing holes in their irises and consuming, devouring, and tasting until the world lays in a crumpled heap of lies and deceit.

Charles brings me back, tugging my thoughts on a string inward, plucking them into a relative order. He sends me an image of the previous night, him splayed out in front of me, pale as moonlight as I kiss his porcelain skin. He projects tranquility so that I can feel something again, something other than this burning, igniting, combustion heat that boils inside, forever building and gathering.

Charles is the only one able to bring me back like that, to guide me in from the shore and I marvel at how he does it. After all he has seen, Charles has still managed to escape the wild fire the world had procured for him. Even after it burned his eyes, he can still look into the flames and see beauty. Even through the years of bruises he won’t talk about, the abrasions on his skin he keeps hidden by bulky sweaters. Even if he does not explain why his house is an empty shell, with too many locked room and dust-covered photo albums. Even after facing persecution and vile vindictive statements that were hurtled toward him, denting his beautiful skin. He didn’t only return a smile, but offered it to others on a golden platter, for all of the greedy fools to consume, devour, and to taste. They took and they took and still he gave and gave and  _ how are you not crumbling inside Charles, when you can hear what they think about you and about our kind? _

“I am quite alright, Erik, thank you for your concern.” Charles murmurs, for the first time vocalising into the cracked and bleeding air around us.

I glance sharply at him, “You said you wouldn’t do that.”

“You were thinking quite loudly, my friend. I apologise.”

I duck my head and blow out a breath, trying to puff toxins and hatred out of my lungs. The metal trembles and shakes around us until a hand is placed over my own.

_ Erik. _

His thoughts soothe me so I can refocus and collect myself once more. I know that the only way to funnel all of that anger is to put it into the task. The mission. The objective. It is all that matters. To douse the fire I must achieve justice for my charred soul and, more importantly, for our broken race.

I am tired of watching my brothers and sisters seal tape over their mouths for the sake of equality, so they can fit into the tight-lipped culture and conform. It is noxious and it will kill us if we don’t do anything about it.

“And as for our kind,” Charles injects once more, “there are always peaceful ways of settling this, anger and fear will only divide us, not unite us.” 

Charles speaks of  _ peaceful measures _ , I nearly scoff at that. How can we fight bullets with words? “The only action is to show them who we are and what we can do. We need to stop hiding in the shadows and come into the light.” I blurt out, unable to keep my thoughts at bay any longer.

A spark of light crosses Charles’ crystalline gaze before it’s gone and he merely looks tired and betrayed that I brought this up in our sanctuary.

“Erik, you know that there is always more than one way to resolve a conflict.” He tells me, eyes imploring.

“Not this time.” I say… I cannot explain it to him anymore, not in so many words. They are like ashes in my mouth that I cannot spit out, so I lean forward and grasp both of his shoulders with strong, unrelenting hands.

“Read my mind, Charles. Look at what humanity has done.”

There is hesitation in Charles’ impossibly blue gaze, something I am unaccustomed to seeing there.

“Do it! You have to understand or you will always be foolishly deluded.” I snap, words like edges of serrated knives, intending to injure, to maim.

Charles does as he’s told, for once, and his presence encroaches into my head, not uncomfortable, just there. I take him through the flames, knowing full well that they will burn him alive, but he follows me anyway; as always, Charles is prepared to become a martyr for the sake of understanding others. It pains me to do this to him, but I must if we will ever fully understand each other. He has seen many of these horrors on the night that he wretched me from those icy waters, gasping and spluttering. I take him now into those in-between memories, the ones that are overlooked when other traumas wormed their way in. Those memories that soon became insignificant compared to the overall horror of living in a world of fear and power.

I show him dominance first. The men with red painted on their shoulders and chests, raising their guns and choosing who dies, the boy next to me falls like a puppet with his strings cut. I watch the life leave his eyes,  _ don’t look away don’t let them see your weakness, remember this, remember who is in power. _

Like flicking the pages on a photo album I show him indifference next, the previous image melting away. I squint through the dying sun to the shadows monstrously,  _ hideously _ flinging lifeless corpses into mounds of packed dirt, uncaring;  _ they’re already dead they suffered least. _

And then there is grief, unwarranted and painfully heavy; I drudge it up from my memories, it comes attached to the indifference and I cannot let it go. A deep heaviness weighs my thoughts down and surely this will suffocate Charles, if he holds on to my torrid memories for much longer. But I have asked him in, so he will stay, that is what he does and I cannot hate him nor love him for it. He allows in the grief and although he has seen this before, I cannot help but replay it; my mother collapsing, blood pooling and the tug of metal finally tingles in my very bones and I tear my world apart but it’s too late,  _ I failed her, I failed and now she's dead and I am alone with the monsters and in order to survive I must become one. _ So I evolve, I pack the hole she left with red hot lava, and let it burn away at my soul, consuming, devouring, tasting and there it is; the last and only productive thing I can give:

Anger.

Charles is the innocent bystander to the havoc I spread, the guns I have fired, the bullets that have lodged into flesh, and the skin I have carved as anger carved me open. Blood for blood I was created.

Charles ever so gently steps out of my mind and I open my blurred gaze to meet his. I  see nothing but sadness, understanding and love there. His eyes are welled with tears and a single drop makes a track down his cheek and I wipe it away.  _ He gives and he gives and he gives _ and I can no longer take from him, it isn’t kind, it isn’t decent to rob him of happiness.

_ Erik, I care for you and cannot pretend to understand everything you have been through but I know that your heart is still good. I understand you, I ask that in turn, you may understand me.  _ “We do not hold the same ideals, Erik, but that does not mean that I don’t understand your motivation. You are fiercely motivated by anger and though I cannot change your past I want to help you for the future.”

“I don’t need help Charles, I need revenge and justice for our race.”

“Shaw is our race.”

“He is a monster.” I hiss.

_ You’re right my friend and it just… _

Charles opens his mouth to speak, the words seemingly too important to remain in his head, they have to taste the air “it just proves the point that either mutant or human, both are capable of bad  _ and good  _ deeds.”

I stand, forgetting that we aren’t supposed to be talking about this in our sanctuary, “Mutants like Shaw do not deserve to live! And any human  _ or mutant  _ who stands in my way will see that we are the far superior race!”

Charles stands as well, his gaze hard, almost angry… almost. “Erik, that kind of attitude is so similar to those you were held captive by for so many years, I am appalled that you would think that way.”

“I am doing it for the good of the mutants, Charles! You must see that I am doing this in order to  _ save  _ our race. The humans will always hate what they fear and do not understand-”

“Then we mustn’t give them exactly what they are afraid of! Don’t you see, humans and mutants alike deserve a  _ chance  _ in this world.”

“You fool!” I holler in rage and it’s consuming, devouring, tasting and I cannot stop it now.  _ Charles is a fool who will never understand. _

_ You’ve seen my scars, Erik, you know that I understand.  _ His voice in my head is timid, weakly imploring, like a long-suffering sigh. I want to slap myself for projecting that to him, always in my selfish need for revenge, I forget that others have suffered, and it hurts like a physical wound to think how Charles has suffered.

“And maybe I don’t understand what you have been through,” Charles continues, trying to keep an aura of calm about the room, “but I know that you have let grief shape you into what they expected of you, my friend.” He says this in an impossibly low tone, his imploring eyes infuriate me further.

“Stop it Charles! I won’t change my ways and you won’t change yours.”  _ We have got to accept that fact!  _ I finish in my head, the words too uncomfortable to say out loud, the truth too heavy a burden on my tongue. 

Charles opens his mouth to speak but no words leave him. Instead his shoulders slump and he hangs his head, brown hair flopping over his downcast gaze.  _ I won, _ I think bitterly and I hate it. I hate to be the reason for the idealist to finally hang his head.

It is a hateful silence,  _ break it Erik, say something to him, tell him you’re sorry for calling him a fool _ but I cannot get my mouth to open. Our differences push us further apart until we’re miles away.

My gaze lingers on his for a moment then Charles thinks,  _ You’re right, Erik.  _ My heart clenches. He conceded and there is nothing more to say. We will go on with the mission, each of us heading down the same path, side by side, but we will not end up in the same place. That is inevitable. I just hope that one of us doesn’t get burned in the process.

I turn my back on him, opening the door with a flick of my wrist and step into the hallway. I turn, give him a small nod, and depart.

 

 

 

  
**_Charles_ **

 

 

His muffled thoughts awaken me, like submerging from a cool lake of pain and darkness. In my limited time spent with Erik, I have often been woken up by his thoughts, like the points of sharp needles, pricking my brain. But this morning is different. His thoughts are like an ache, sore yet not painful, which is a great improvement. I open my eyes and the room comes into view and most importantly, Erik.

His face is inches from my own, smoothed by sleep and void of creases. His breath tickles my cheek and the heavyweight of his arm sits warmly over my stomach. I smile at this peaceful figure, eyes raking over his broad shoulders and strong arms and appreciate the incredible man before me while awaiting his return to consciousness. It doesn’t take long and soon his stormy eyes are cracking open, meeting my twinkling gaze. The sun feels heavenly warm against our backs as I shift amongst the sky blue sheets of silk and tug him closer. I am content just to lay with him for a moment, not quite ready to dwell on the morning nor the upcoming day just yet.

_ Good morning.  _ I project into his mind and he says it back. But it seems as though Erik’s mind is already active, his tumultuous thoughts are like clouds, drifting in and out of my mind, however hard I try to keep the sun shining through.

I sit up and he follows me, our eyes never wavering from each other, even though his mind is heavy with what we must do today.

We are prepared to fight today

I catch snippets of his thoughts, of threats from the world before he thinks loudly into my head  _ Charles you’re like a furnace  _ and I chuckled, feeling an overwhelming sense of joy that Erik is here with me and that he spent the night again, like he has for the past few weeks. And I know I am naïve to think that nothing will change after today but frankly at the moment I’m too pleased to care. I am also shocked that someone as cold and stoic and strong as Erik would go for some flawed optimist with a fierce belief system in both human and mutant kind. Someone who has been broken by both and buries the pain in deep dark places and suddenly I don’t know if I’m thinking about myself or about Erik because we have both seen the truly appalling parts of the world, and his scars are out in the open, for the world to gawk at, while mine are buried deeper than I can wilfully access.

My eyes rake in Erik’s appearance and try to get lost in the musings of last night how we played chess. He won, but barely, if I hadn’t sacrificed my queen the last minute I would have beaten him. How we drank; scotch neat, for Erik and a white chardonnay for me before tumbling into bed, fiercely passionate but lovingly soft at the same time. I think on these things instead of the fact that we have to leave this little haven we have created for ourselves.

But once again, Erik has different ideas and he is flinging the covers away from himself and making to get out of bed. We can’t have that, so I grab his wrist and plead with him to stay. I don’t care that it is unbecoming of Charles Xavier to beg,  _ Stay. Please. For a moment longer  _ but it works because he willingly concedes defeat  _ Of course I’ll stay Charles I could never refuse you.  _ I grin at that, even though it is not true at all and I burrow into him, watching but not necessarily hearing him think. His brow is crinkled and his frown lines have become a permanent feature, so I try to project thoughts of peace. The images I had been so readily enjoying myself of us together. The bliss I have felt after so long of feeling others thoughts, drowning myself in drink, clinging to Raven until my terribly candid and ugly power pushed even her away. I had spent too much of my life feeling for others, I think I forgot what it was to feel for myself. I resist rolling my eyes at the deploringly cliché sentiment, but Erik  _ has  _ helped me find myself, picked me apart from countless other minds so that I could forge my own. And I hope that in the process I have begun to bring peace to Erik, even if it may have been in the smallest of way possible.

His thoughts surge forward, dark and calculating and unrelentingly cruel, that I should be more frightened by the sentiments he clings to the world by, gnawing his teeth until he is both tearing and being devoured. His hatred toward the world, the world that he grew into is swirling and churning around the room, cracking the air and the metal hums along furiously to Erik’s hateful tune. I pull him back, gently, trying to show him the beauty of that same world that has bloodied him so.

Then like an elastic band, his thoughts snap to me and he is practically yelling in the absolute silence of the room. His anger rears its ugly head once more, but this time the texture is different, it has a mournful quality to it that makes it almost harder to bare. I nearly gasp as I see in his mind's eye my own scars, tracing my flesh in grotesque patterns and he is both lamenting and angry that they exist.  _ How are you not crumbling inside Charles, when you can hear what they think about you and about our kind?  _ His thoughts worm their way inside my mind and I must blink away those memories. I retrieve the moment to its original peace, and mutter into the air, “I am quite alright, Erik, thank you for your concern.”

Erik’s calculating gaze meets mine, and I see shock and hurt there, “You said you wouldn’t do that.”

“You were thinking quite loudly, my friend. I apologise.” I reply and retreat from his wonderful mind once more. I promised him I would stay out of his mind, give him his privacy where it was due. But Erik’s mind is so devilishly preoccupied today that his thoughts roll and tumble through my head. I feel such great sorrow from that wonderful heart that has bore too much, that I have to calm him.

_ Erik. _

It is all I say, but it must be enough because Erik’s turbulent thoughts smooth into a frosty breeze, while mine spin out of control, thinking of the scars that Erik finally saw. I fell over a trip wire and tumbled into my own trap. I allowed vulnerability to crumble my facade that I so devoutly built up, growing thicker skin in hopes that they would hide the heavy burden of truth. For those whom I encounter cannot escape the truth, I too quickly lap it up and devour their thoughts, make them mine. They’re all mine and it's obscenely invasive and sometimes I wish others voices feelings, secrets, and beautifully complex minds were quiet so I could get some rest.

But no.

I built these walls in my mind for a reason, I needed to, lest I accidentally murdered mother or Raven. I learned quickly however that construction on the mind was a far simpler thing than reconstructing the heart. And each time new bruises showed up on my skin, from harsh hands and whisky coloured breath and my mother fading from the room like an autumn breeze, I had to rebuild.  _ Quick, use your head Charles, now is not the time to be slow. Others are depending on you. Think of Raven. Misdirect, lead him away. _

Erik wonders how a telepath can still believe in the world after being able to see the hate in each person’s heart and I always tell him that being able to see the hate also means that I can see the love and the kindness.

But despite this, rest is not something that comes easily to me, it never has. And now Erik has seen the marks that cruelty bore and I am astonished, but not altogether surprised to see that he looks beyond my broken past, to who lays before him, and I have the sudden urge to hold him close for as long as I can. Even though I spent years directing people away, or drinking, playing the college role, I have the sharp urge to be myself with him, not a mold of another’s mind. Just myself.

His thoughts are lingering on his fellow mutants now and I remember the latter half of his question.

“And as for our kind,” I add, “there are always peaceful ways of settling this, anger and fear will only divide us, not unite us.” 

“The only action is to show them who we are and what we can do. We need to stop hiding in the shadows and come into the light.” Erik snaps, his eyes darkening, pupils contracting.

I do not wish to discuss this when we had such a pleasant evening and I simply want to tug him closer and drift off once more, but it is something that we  _ must  _ discuss if we are ever going to come to a compromise. Our pillars of truth stand quite far apart and although I do not wish to tear Erik’s down, even if I  _ could  _ I would not. A man’s truth is constructed off of experiences and Erik’s life experiences have allowed him to build strong reinforcement of truth, made of steel and unshakably strong metal. While a small voice in the back of my head says I cannot win against Erik, that we will end up divided either way, I refuse to back down.

“Erik, you know that there is always more than one way to resolve a conflict.” I say, nearly pleading with my expression.

“Not here.” Erik replies, cold as stone. A steely expression crosses his face before he says, “read my mind, Charles. Look at what humanity has done.”

I did not expect that. Erik told me to stay out of his head and I wish to respect his wishes as much as I can, but the other part of me  _ wants  _ to crawl inside that big brain of his and lap it up.

“Do it! You have to understand or you will always be foolishly deluded.” Erik spits, his eyes like ice while his words burn like fire. I contain a flinch but do not hesitate, Erik thinks this will change the way I view humanity, but I already know it will just change the way I view him. I have seen his mind before he told me to get out of it. I know the kind of horrors he has been through,  but this is what I am good at, reading minds and getting in everyone's head. So I wade cautiously into the pool of his thoughts and he drags me under.

The images come to life before my eyes,  _ through Erik’s eyes,  _ I remind myself. He is watching as Nazi soldiers pick their way along a row of people, who are all painted in black and white stripes, all gaunt and lonely and impossibly sad. I watch as a soldier shoots the boy beside Erik, feel as Erik’s heart skyrocket in his chest and how fear floods his every nerve, a sheer, white-hot panic. It roots Erik to the spot even as the scene changes, the feeling lingers, even intensifies.

Now Erik stands a few meters from a large ridge, where soldiers are throwing in the corpses and Erik’s feelings have changed now, something akin to acceptance, the knowledge that he will die and the hope that it will be soon. It hurts more than the fear because surrender tastes like iron and smells putrid. I nearly gag at the overwhelming emotions that are not my own but deeply personal.

I am unprepared for the next memory and it hits me like a freight train. It is grief that fills your lungs with ash and chokes you. Grief that both fills you with vile acid and empties you of all emotion. I have never felt grief like this before. The  _ guilt  _ that Erik feels now, is overwhelming and all-encompassing. It tears off flesh and bites clean through bone and it is not beautiful and it is not sad, it is horrible. I had felt this before, when I dove into Erik’s mind the first time, but even then it was shrouded by anger and masked by hate.

This… this open grief is much worse. 

I see through his eyes his mother drop, feel her blood splatter my clothing, watch the light leave her eyes. And then I feel the anger, rearing its ugly head and forcing Erik into action. I feel the metal screaming around him as he splits the very air around him.

I have to get back to him, to begin to heal his broken mind of those memories he just opened up for me. It was a shockingly naked display, one I had not yet seen from Erik even though I had made love to him many times.

It shakes me to the very core and a part of me thinks  _ it’s too damn early for this!  _ But this is Erik and his emotions have always been turbulent and his mind always the sharp point of a blade, deadly accurate and unrelenting. 

All I wanted to do was lie with my lover and feel the morning sun on our backs and now I feel like I want to throw up and  _ Erik has dealt with the pain his whole life, it never leaves him and he never relinquishes it. It is his punishment.  _ And I hate that he punishes himself so… to carry the burden on the dead on the backs of the living is a heavy weight… I would know. 

And I ask myself… why now? Why today? And the answer comes readily to me. The whole world is about to change. For good or bad, we do not know, but things are going to be different from here on out. Maybe not on a grand scheme, if we can stop Shaw and those missiles… but in my own little world I have cultivated with Erik… things will change between us. It settles inside of me like a heavy stone, a cold little burden. And this is why Erik wants to show me his pain, to get me on his side. To convince me to join him in his vendetta against humans.

I remove myself from his tortured mind and look into his broken gaze. He wipes a tear from my cheek and I suppress a shudder. He is so so good and he doesn’t even realise.

_ Erik, I care for you and cannot pretend to understand everything you have been through but I know that your heart is still good. I understand you, I ask that in turn, you may understand me.  _ I must speak, thoughts are not enough. “We do not hold the same ideals, Erik, but that does not mean that I don’t understand your motivation. You are fiercely motivated by anger and though I cannot change your past I want to help you for the future.”

“I don’t need help Charles, I need revenge and justice for our race.” Erik is cold again, his thoughts shrouded in darkness.

“Shaw is our race.” I try.

“He is a monster.” Erik replies and I cannot help but agree with him.

_ You’re right my friend and it just… _ again, thoughts are not enough, even for the telepath so I say, “it just proves the point that either mutant or human, both are capable of bad  _ and good  _ deeds.”

Erik stands so abruptly that I suddenly have to crane my neck to look at him.

“Mutants like Shaw do not deserve to live! And any human  _ or mutant  _ who stands in my way will see that we are the far superior race!”

A hot flash of anger ignites in my chest as I stand as well, before I speak I cool the anger and master my emotions,  _ blowing up at Erik won’t help anyone _ I remind myself.

“Erik, that kind of attitude is so alike to those you were captured by for so many years that I am appalled that you think that.”

“I am doing it for the good of the mutants, Charles! You must see that I am doing this in order to  _ save  _ our race. The humans will always hate what they fear and do not understand-”

“Then we mustn’t give them  _ exactly _ what they are afraid of!” I cut through him, “Don’t you see, humans and mutants alike deserve a  _ chance  _ in this world.”

“You fool!” He bellows in rage and suddenly his anger is palpable and hot in the enclosed space and his thoughts slip through the cracks in his mind and burn into my head.

_ Charles is a fool who will never understand. _

_ You’ve seen my scars, Erik, you know that I understand.  _ I think, knowing full well that I cannot hide from that fact any longer.

“And maybe I don’t understand what you have been through,” I said aloud, again projecting calming and peaceful thoughts into the room, attempting to douse a fire that is already burning between us. “But I know that you have let grief shape you into what they expected of you, my friend.”

“Stop it Charles! I won’t change my ways and you won’t change yours,” _we_ _have got to accept that fact!_

I nearly recoil at his thoughts but the truth behind them settle like an ache in my chest. I cannot find the words to amend his statement or tell him he is wrong. Because he is absolutely right. As much as I love Erik I will never understand his methods, and he was right. I was a fool to believe I could change him so easily. Even though I know I will never ever stop trying because I cannot give up on him like that.

_ You’re right, Erik.  _ I think, no bitterness to my thoughts, just accepting a truth that has thus far gone unspoken and unexamined. Now that the truth has settled like concrete between our foundations I cannot do anything to cut it away. But instead it stands between us, an unmovable monstrosity.

I release a sigh as Erik walks toward the door. He flicks it open with his powers and a part of me, the part that wants to keep my composure hopes he keeps his back turned, but the other part of me, the part that loves him deeply, wants desperately for him to look back at me, for some false hope that we’ll be okay, that the two of us will come out of the fire unscathed, side by side. And he turns to me, his eyes have lost their cold quality and there is only fierce determination there. He nods to me and I stare after him until he turns away and disappears down the hallway and out of sight.

__

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, let me know what you think! This is my first work with these particular characters/fandom!


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